One saved a boy. One caught a purse snatcher. St. Paul police commend 4

St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith, left, presents the Chief's Award for Valor to Frederick Jarrell of St. Paul on Friday for rescuing a boy from the bluffs at Indian Mounds Regional Park last May. Jarrell was one of four to be recognized in the ceremony at St. Paul Police headquarters. (Pioneer Press: Raya Zimmerman)

Frederick Jarrell saved an autistic boy from falling off bluffs at least two stories high. Aaron Henderson held a suspected purse thief in an armlock until police arrived.

Jarrell and Henderson, along with two men connected to the St. Paul Police Department, were awarded for heroic acts at a police ceremony Friday. St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith handed out four Chief's Awards, which are granted three to four times per year.

Jarrell, 42, got the Chief's Award for Valor. He said that before moving to St. Paul, he worked at a prison in Louisiana where he kept watch on prisoners. He said his ability to spot unusual events or behavior helped save the little boy's life.

Last May, he was working as an engineer for Canadian Pacific Railway. When his train stopped to change crews, he said, he was stretching and looking around Indian Mounds Regional Park when he saw a little boy in pajamas with no shoes climbing on the bluffs. He didn't know police were searching for 7-year-old William Simonbet, who is autistic and had wandered from his home. Jarrell alerted the train crews, scaled the bluffs and carried the child to the top, where rescue teams met them.

"There wasn't any second-guessing on what to do," Jarrell said Friday. "There was a child involved. It was a life-and-death situation."

Henderson, 29, said he was jogging along Summit Avenue in January when he saw a woman run across the street chasing two young men.

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Henderson, who is training for Grandma's Marathon and who ran in the Twin Cities Marathon last October, said he heard the woman scream that her purse had been stolen. He said he chased after the one carrying the purse, caught up with him and held him in an armlock until police arrived.

Parking Enforcement Officer Rudy Burgos was unarmed when he chased two suspects who tried to rob a group of people. Last July, Burgos was tagging vehicles on the East Side of St. Paul when a woman approached him and said there was a fight nearby. When he found 10 to 15 people fighting, two males fled. Those who remained told him that the two had a knife and had tried to rob them.

"The whole time my adrenaline was hyped up," Burgos, 22, said. "I had to have a clear head and not panic."

Burgos waited outside a home where police found the two men hiding in a crawl space.

Burgos and a former St. Paul police intern, Cody Larson, have applied to become St. Paul police officers.

In a three-month period last year, Larson, 25, helped solve seven Craigslist robberies, two shootings in St. Paul, two robberies and a shooting in other cities. He analyzed police reports to spot crime trends in the police department's special investigations unit.